Still, the desire, as a rule, is actually to see the eyes opening; and the danger is therefore greater in the case of a story which is told off-hand and viva voce for the sake of immediate effect, than in the case of evidence which is first written down at leisure, and has then to undergo the ordeal of a careful and detailed scrutiny. Nor must we forget that there is another instinct which tends directly to discourage wonder-mongering, at any rate in the narration of unusual personal experiences - the instinct to win belief. Where the risk of being disbelieved is appreciable, a sense of accuracy becomes also a sense of security; a thing being credible to oneself just because it is fact, the consciousness of not exaggerating the fact begets a sort of trust that others may somehow find it credible. And with the class from whom our evidence is chiefly drawn, this influence seems not less likely to be operative than the desire to say something startling. The latter tendency is more prone on the whole to affect second-hand witnesses, who do not feel bound to exercise any economy of the miraculous, who can always fall back on the plea that they are only telling what was told to them, and who may easily be led into inaccuracies by the analogy of other marvellous stories.

And indeed it is a matter of ordinary observation, by no means confined to "psychical research," that where the subject of narration has nothing to do with merit, and what is alleged to have been done or suffered is not of a sort to attract admiration to the doer or sufferer, the more extravagant sort of stories are given, not as personal experiences, but on the authority of someone else. If there is exaggeration, it is "a friend "who is to blame; and this term is used on such occasions with considerable latitude. I have already noted how, in the case of witchcraft, the more bizarre incidents do not rest on anything like traceable first-hand testimony. This remark is applicable in a general way to the whole field of evidence for marvellous events, as recorded in modern literature; and the same fact has been very noticeable with respect to the evidence, of very various sorts and qualities, which has come under the attention of my colleagues and myself during the last few years. We have often taken the trouble to trace and test the matter of those sensational newspaper-paragraphs which get so freely copied from one journal into another; but in scarcely one per cent. of the cases has the evidence held water.

And in the ordinary talk of society, where there is often a show or assertion of authority for the statements made, one gradually learns to diagnose with confidence the accounts which profess to be second or third hand from the original, but of which no original will ever be forthcoming. An example is the well-known tale of a dripping letter, handed to a lady by the phantasmal figure of a midshipman who had been drowned before he could execute his commission. If the newspaper anecdotes were like bubbles that break in the pursuer's hand, a society marvel of this stamp may be more fitly compared to a will-o'-the-wisp: one never gets any nearer to it. Then there is the young lady who was preserved from a railway accident by seeing the apparition of her fiance on the platform of three consecutive stations - which induced her to alight. Here I was actually promised an introduction to the heroine: what I finally received was a reference to "a friend of the lady who told the story." Or, again, there is the tale of second-sight, so widely told during the last three years, where the visitor saw a daughter of the house stabbed by a stranger, whom he has since identified as her husband, and has remorselessly dogged in hansom cabs.

Three or four times have we been, so to speak, "one off " this story; but the various clues have shown no sign of converging; and we still occasionally hear of the happy couple as on their honeymoon.

§ 6. Turning now to the sources of error in memory, we find the danger here is of a more insidious kind, in that comparatively few persons realise the extent to which it exists in their own case. For one who is innocent of any desire to impress his auditor in any particular way, and who simply desires to tell the truth, it is not easy to realise that he may be an untrustworthy witness about matters concerning himself. The weaknesses of human memory, and the precautions which they necessitate, will be so frequent a topic in the sequel that a brief classification will here suffice.

We must allow, in the first place, for a common result of the belief in supernatural influences and providential interpositions. Persons who are interested in such ideas will be keenly alive to any phenomena which seem to transcend a purely materialistic view of life. They will be apt to see facts of this class where they do not exist, and to interpret in this sense small or vague occurrences which if accurately examined at the time might have been otherwise explained. And where this tendency exists, it is almost inevitable that, as time goes on, the occurrence should represent itself to memory more and more in the desired light, that inconvenient details should drop out, and that the remainder should stand out in a deceptively significant and harmonious form. Of the cases to be here presented, however, only a very small proportion betray any idea on the part of the witness that what he recounts has any special religious or philosophical significance. Our informants have had no motive to conceal from us their real view of the facts; and if they narrate an incident as simply strange or unaccountable, we have no right to assume their evidence to have been coloured by an emotional sense that materialism had been refuted in their person, or that supernatural communications had been permitted to them.

Indeed, as regards religious and emotional prepossessions, we are certainly justified in thinking that they have rather been hindrances than helps to the presentation of an abundant array of evidence. For it has happened in many instances that persons whose testimony would have been a valuable addition to the case for telepathy, have felt their experiences to be too intimate or too sacred for publication.1